By Aaron Palmer ~
The first time I saw her I was in a bad way. Recently graduated, I’d accepted a paid internship at an electronics manufacturing firm that promised to add a gold star to my weak resume.
Unfortunately, I had to relocate from the town I’d come to love, San Luis Obispo, to an infertile, lonely part of the Central Valley. The upside— I’d be getting away from anything that reminded me of my ex.
The completion of my twelve month internship couldn’t come soon enough. I managed a production line of unskilled workers surrounded by circuit boards and overhead soldering irons. I lived in a blistering hot mobile home in the foothills. There was nothing there for recreation— no bars, not a library within 40 miles, just scrub brush with the occasional oak where water might flow. I began a ritual of buying a sixer on my way home to pacify and, as it turned out, drown some part of my humanity.
Driving home one day, the sun hung low on the horizon reflecting the upper end of a rainbow through the smog. Rounding a sharp bend in the road I caught the figure of a dog sitting under what must have been a 200 year old oak at the apex of the curve. A female, I thought. There weren’t any driveways nearby.
Who did she belong to? The sight of this lonely, yet seemingly contented animal shifted the focus off my melancholy for the rest of the night. Instead of downing all my brews in succession, I stopped at two and thought about where I wanted to be in the next year. Answers were not yet forthcoming.
I saw her every weekday that summer, though I didn’t expect her to be there on the first wet storm of Fall. I was was happy find my old friend in her usual spot and decided to see if she might want to dry off. I slowly pulled up to her oak. As I got out, I could tell that something was wrong. The pit of my stomach tightened the way it did when Lacy, my ex, told me she needed space. Cautiously I approached so as not to frighten my little buddy and then, oh no— I reflexively heaved my daily fries onto the roadside. Dead! Though her auburn fur looked relatively healthy, she was nothing more than a shell of a dog.
She’d likely gotten hit earlier in the summer and had lain down to die under the shade of the sublime oak. Preserved by the dry heat of summer, it looked to be a comfortable position where she could watch the road, probably hoping for her master to see her, to save her. And yet I’d just passed her by, day after day. God…
